Overview

The Director-General’s Office is responsible for overseeing all the activities in the DMO, including those of all the departments in the Front, Middle and Back Offices, as well as the Organizational Resourcing Department (ORD). The Director-General’s Office coordinates the activities of the DMO Secretariat with respect to the DMO Supervisory Board. The Director-General’s Office also oversees the DMO’s collaboration with all the local and external stakeholders. These responsibilities are coordinated by the Executive Unit (EU), under the direction and supervision of the Director-General.
Besides the Executive Unit, there are two other Units attached to the DG’s Office: The Internal Audit & Control Unit (IA&CU), and the BATS (Bond Auctioning and Trading System) & External Support Team (BEST).

INTERNAL AUDIT AND CONTROL UNIT
Scope of Work
The broad scope of work includes:

• Financial operations audit – scrutinizing, checking and confirming that all financial transactions are validly authorized, adequately documented and properly disclosed. In doing this, the internal audit ensures that the operations and conduct of the DMO’s financial activities comply with the requirements of the Financial Regulations, Public Service Rules, extant treasury circulars, and other laws of the Federal Government of Nigeria. There is regular audit verification of all payment vouchers before any disbursement of fund. Also, all accounting books, records, payrolls, bank reconciliation statements, stationery stores, cash advances, etc, are subject to regular internal audit monitoring and reviews.
• Debt management audit – All external creditors’ bills which have been admitted by the Debt Recording and Settlement Department must be vetted by the internal audit and control unit prior to further actions on them. Audit ensures that these bills are settled in accordance with the understanding reached by all stakeholders on external debt settlement procedures. Matters relating to FGN Bond operations are not left out by the internal audit dragnet.
• Systems audit – the internal audit also studies, identifies, and evaluates inherent risks and adequacy of their mitigating controls (as established by management) and their impacts on the achievement of DMO’s objectives. It is also part of the work of the internal audit team leader to interact with the firm of external auditors for the purpose of ensuring that the statutory requirement of the DMO relating to audit are complied with.

Accountability
The internal audit and control unit is directly accountable to the D-G of the DMO and consequently addresses all its reports to him. However, certain reports are to be mandatorily made available to the Office of Accountant General of Federation and Office of the Auditor General for the Federation. These reports include:
•Monthly Progress Reports,
•Quarterly Reports,
•Half Yearly Reports, and
•Yearly Reports.

Authority and Standards of Audit Practice
The Internal Audit and Control unit is authorized to have unrestricted access to all functions, records, property and personnel of DMO. The unit selects subjects for audit and determines scope of audit work to be performed thereon.
The unit performs its duties in ways that meet the professional practice of internal auditing and best practices worldwide.

BATS & EXTERNAL SUPPORT TEAM (BEST)
The BATS and External Support Team carries out three main responsibilities
i.BATS (Bond Auctioning and Trading System) Implementation
ii.External Support Resource Mobilization and Implementation Coordination
iii.Curriculum Development

BATS Implementation
The BATS Implementation derives from one of the key points of Strategic Objective 3 of the Debt Management Office (DMO) Strategic Plan 2008-2012, which is “to establish an efficient automated IT Platform for auctioning of FGN Bonds”. The Strategic Objective 3 seeks “To build a first-rate and internationally competitive bond market, not only to support government financing needs, but also to provide the private sector access to long term financing, in line with the Financial Sector Strategy (FSS) 2020”. The BATS and External Support Team was thus created in July, 2009, to implement the acquisition and installation of the IT solution for the development of the FGN bond market in particular and the fixed income securities market and indeed the capital market in Nigeria. The IT infrastructure is expected to, among others, support operations of the DMO and the market, address and resolve current and evolving limitations, including process sophistication, development of new products, development of primary and secondary markets strategies and development of the sub-national and corporate bond markets. The Team is to ensure that the IT system would be functional, scalable, robust, available, flexible, based on open technology, of international standards, user friendly and future proof. It should be a centralized system which supports a wide variety of different interfaces, provide a “Plug and Play” to allow new systems to be added seamlessly, integrates different systems in the market and makes information from one system user friendly automatically to other systems, etc.

It is the responsibility of the Team to seek and secure funding for the said system either by budgetary processes or through development assistance. If by development assistance, it should work with the development partner to procure the system using the partner’s standards and processes. If by budgetary processes, it is responsible for the conduct of the procurement process, in line with Due Process guidelines and the Due Process Act, 2007 through setting up of relevant committees (Procurement Planning Committee, Parastatals Tenders Board and Technical Evaluation Subcommittee), advertising and soliciting for bids (through international competitive tenders), etc. It is the responsibility of the Team to set bid evaluation criteria , prequalify and evaluate bids, seek Due Process “No Objection” certification from the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), seek Federal Executive Council (FEC) approval and ensure the acquisition, installation, test-running and usage of the IT system.

External Support Coordination
The team is also responsible for exploring and establishing relationships and resource mobilization from donors and development partners like the British Department for International Development (DFID), World Bank, USAID, UNDP, EU, CIDA, etc. It is to seek donor support/intervention on programmes and projects of the DMO and develop a work plan for the support, while following-up on the implementation of the Work Plan. It is the In-House manager of subsisting projects and together with the Partner and external project manager, it is the responsibility of the Team to conduct an Output-to-Purpose review of the project, implement the project in line with the Work Plan and at the completion of the project, conduct a Project Completion Review (PCR) and Project Steering Committee meetings (PSC), as a way of evaluating the performance of the project and making future plans.

Curriculum Development
The Curriculum Development Unit (CD) is responsible for developing curriculum for the various training programmes of the DMO and the development of global networking aimed at facilitating the establishment of a debt management institution in Nigeria. The unit is also in charge of liaising with other institution of learning in developing curriculum and making inputs where such contacts are made into developing an acceptable Public debt management guideline.